a lifeline to academics at risk

Cara ‘10 x 20’ Fundraising Appeal - We Need Your Support!

May 2017: Protesters in Budapest rally against the Hungarian government's attempt to force the closure of the Central European University
(REUTERS/Laszlo Balogh)

All around the world, academics face persecution, imprisonment, violence or even death. Cara has brought hundreds to safety. But many more are still in danger, and need help, urgently, to get away.

Applications for Cara’s help are at record levels; and we have a long waiting list. We have only six full-time staff, already stretched to the limits: and while many universities are providing generous support for Cara Fellows, we still need funds of our own to help get people to safety.

Some 400,000 people work in Higher Education in the UK, and more in the UK’s learned societies. If 10% of them were able to give just £20 to Cara every year – £5 per quarter – our finances would be transformed.

With more money, we could take on the extra staff we need to clear the backlog, and to deal quickly with the many new enquiries we receive each week.

£25,000 pa, for example, could cover all the costs of an extra team member, able to manage 25 cases – save 25 families – at a time.

And with more funds, we could make more awards.

Hundreds more could be saved.

When Cara was founded by academics and scientists in the UK to rescue their colleagues from Nazi Germany, it was the generosity of individuals that launched the process which, in six years, saved some 2000 people.

And so we have launched our 10 x 20 Appeal now – with the goal of persuading 10% of staff in UK universities and of staff and members of UK learned societies to sign up to a regular donation of £20 per year. We know this is ambitious. But academics and their families around the world are in danger; and we need at least to double the number of people we can rescue.

You can help by joining those who have already donated, using the special ‘Donate’ buttons on this page. You can of course donate a different sum if you wish. And please tell your friends and colleagues about our appeal, and encourage them to donate too.

If you would like to get in touch with us to find out more about what we are doing, please e-mail our Executive Director, Stephen Wordsworth, or call him on 020 7021 0882/0880.

Whatever you can give will make a real difference. But don’t just take our word for it. Click here to watch a short video in which two Cara Fellows from Syria, Reem and Saeed, tell you what Cara’s help has meant for them.

“Many doctors fled Mosul but those of us who remained were forced to work in very bad conditions. The city was out of control and Dae’sh executed anyone who spoke against them. A lot of people were killed for nothing … It’s not an exaggeration to say that Cara have saved the lives of my family and me, saved our future and even our dreams."